The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Physics,
#11551
Gerald Rosselot
1908 - 1972 (64 years)
Gerald A. Rosselot was an American physicist and engineering executive at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Georgia Tech Research Institute and Bendix Corporation . He was an IEEE Fellow. Early life Rosselot was born January 11, 1908, in Westerville, Ohio. As a child, Rosselot traveled to France and England and became somewhat proficient in French. He attended and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Otterbein College in 1929, a Master of Arts from Ohio State University in 1930, and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1936. In 1930, he married Gladys Anna Dickey, and would eventua...
Go to Profile#11552
Joseph Winlock
1826 - 1875 (49 years)
Joseph Winlock was an American astronomer and mathematician. Biography He was born in Shelby County, Kentucky, the grandson of General Joseph Winlock . After graduating from Shelby College in Kentucky in 1845, he was appointed professor of mathematics and astronomy at that institution.
Go to Profile#11553
Andrea Naccari
1841 - 1919 (78 years)
Andrea Naccari is notable for his study of the thermoelectric properties of metals, the photoelectric effect of metals immersed in liquids, and the electrical conductivity of gases and liquid dielectrics. He showed that the variation in the electrical resistance of distilled water was due largely to the solubility of the glass of the receptacle in which it was contained.
Go to Profile#11554
Elisabeth Bardwell
1831 - 1899 (68 years)
Elisabeth Miller Bardwell was an American astronomer whose main area of study was meteor showers. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1866, and continued on at the college as an instructor until her death. During those 33 years, she taught a mixture of algebra, trigonometry, physics, and astronomy for the first twenty years, and eventually only astronomy after 1886. She also oversaw the development of the observatory at the college which included invited visits to the Washington, Princeton, Lick, Berlin, and Potsdam observatories. In November, 1891 she was elected a member of the Astr...
Go to Profile#11555
Sergei Kostinsky
1867 - 1936 (69 years)
Sergei Konstantinovich Kostinsky was a Russian and Soviet astronomer who worked on observational and photographic astronomical measurement techniques at the Pulkovo Observatory. The so-called Kostinsky Effect involving the merging of closely occurring stars on a photographic plate is named after him as are an asteroid and a crater on the Moon.
Go to Profile#11556
Marie Henri Andoyer
1862 - 1929 (67 years)
Marie Henri Andoyer was a French astronomer and mathematician. Biography Andoyer was born in Paris, 1 October 1862 to Marie Antionette Doubliez and Louis Jules Andoyer. His father was bureau chief at the Banque de France. Andoyer studied at the Lycée d’Harcourt, before attending the École Normale Supérieure, graduating in 1884 with a degree in mathematical sciences. The same year he began working at Toulouse Observatory and was a lecturer at the Faculty of Sciences in Toulouse.
Go to Profile#11557
Johann Georg von Soldner
1776 - 1833 (57 years)
Johann Georg von Soldner was a German physicist, mathematician and astronomer, first in Berlin and later in 1808 in Munich. Life He was born in Feuchtwangen in Ansbach as the son of the farmer Johann Andreas Soldner. He received two years' teaching at the Feuchtwanger Latin School.
Go to Profile#11558
Herschel Clifford Parker
1867 - 1944 (77 years)
Herschel Clifford Parker was a United States physicist and mountaineer. Biography He graduated from the Columbia School of Mines in 1890, receiving a degree of Ph.B., and was connected with the faculty there in 1891–1911, filling the chair of physics for some time before his resignation. He wrote Systematic Treatise on Electrical Measurements , and made many contributions to scientific periodicals. He was a member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the American Physical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, The Explorers Club, and the Appalachian Mountain Club. He was a ...
Go to Profile#11559
Phoebe Waterman Haas
1882 - 1967 (85 years)
Phoebe Waterman Haas was one of the earliest American women to be awarded a doctorate in astronomy . While her formal professional career ended upon her marriage, she contributed as a citizen scientist, volunteering for the American Association of Variable Star Observers . The Phoebe Waterman Haas Public Observatory was supported by donations from her family and is named in her honor.
Go to Profile#11560
Hans-joachim Prof. Dr. Güntherodt
#11561
Richard Barry Bernstein
1923 - 1990 (67 years)
Richard Barry Bernstein was an American physical chemist. He is primarily known for his research in chemical kinetics and reaction dynamics by molecular beam scattering and laser techniques. He is credited with having founded femtochemistry, which laid the groundwork for developments in femtobiology. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1970. Among his awards were the National Medal of Science and the Willard Gibbs Award, both in 1989.
Go to Profile#11562
Norman Robert Campbell
1880 - 1949 (69 years)
Norman Robert Campbell was an English physicist and philosopher of science. Early life Norman Robert Campbell was born in 1880. He was the son of William Middleton Campbell, Governor of the Bank of England, and his wife Edith Agneta Bevan. He was educated at Eton College and at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1902.
Go to Profile#11563
Alī ibn Ahmad al-Nasawī
1010 - 1075 (65 years)
#11564
Arnold Kohlschütter
1883 - 1969 (86 years)
Ernst Arnold Kohlschütter was a German astronomer and astrophysicist from Halle. In 1908 he was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen under Karl Schwarzschild. In 1911 he began working at the Mount Wilson observatory, studying the spectra of the Sun and stars in collaboration with Walter Sidney Adams. In 1914 they discovered that the absolute luminosity of a star is proportional to the relative intensity of the lines in the spectrum. This allowed astronomers to determine the distance of stars, including main sequence and giants, using the spectroscope.
Go to Profile#11565
Jean-Alfred Gautier
1793 - 1881 (88 years)
Jean-Alfred Gautier or Alfred Gautier was a Swiss astronomer. Biography He was born in Cologny. He was the son of François Gautier, merchant, and of Marie de Tournes. He studied astronomy at the University of Geneva, then at the University of Paris. He was awarded a doctorate in celestial mechanics in Paris in 1817; his thesis was entitled Historical essay on the problem of three bodies. His academic advisors were Laplace, Lagrange and Legendre. In 1818 he worked in England with Herschel.
Go to Profile#11566
Giovanni Sante Gaspero Santini
1787 - 1877 (90 years)
Giovanni Sante Gaspero Santini was an Italian astronomer and mathematician. He received his first instruction from his parental uncle, the Abbot Giovanni Battista Santini. After finishing his philosophical studies in the school year 1801-2, at the seminary of Prato, he entered in 1802 the University of Pisa. He very soon abandoned the study of law in order to devote himself, under the direction of Prof. Paoli and Abbot Pacchiano, exclusively to mathematics and the natural sciences. It appears that at Pisa, Santini still wore the cassock, with the consequence that in bibliographical dictionaries he still figures under the title of abate.
Go to Profile#11567
Heinrich Kreutz
1854 - 1907 (53 years)
Heinrich Carl Friedrich Kreutz was a German astronomer, most notable for his studies of the orbits of several sungrazing comets, which revealed that they were all related objects, produced when a very large Sun-grazing comet fragmented several hundred years previously. The group is now known as the Kreutz Sungrazers, and has produced some of the brightest comets ever seen, including X/1106 C1 and Comet Ikeya–Seki. The source of the group may have been the Great Comet of 371 BC.
Go to Profile#11568
Euctemon
Euctemon was an Athenian astronomer. He was a contemporary of Meton and worked closely with this astronomer. Little is known of his work apart from his partnership with Meton and what is mentioned by Ptolemy. With Meton, he made a series of observations of the solstices in order to determine the length of the tropical year. Geminus and Ptolemy quote him as a source on the rising and setting of the stars. Pausanias's Description of Greece names Damon and Philogenes and Euctemon's children.
Go to Profile#11569
Boris Gerasimovich
1889 - 1937 (48 years)
Boris Petrovich Gerasimovich was a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist. Biography Gerasimovich was born in Kremenchuk . He graduated from Kharkiv University in 1914 having studied under Aristarkh Belopolsky. From 1917 until 1933 he worked at the Kharkiv University observatory. He became the director of the Pulkovo Observatory in 1933, but was arrested and executed during the Great Purge. He had a daughter, Tatiana Borisovna Gerasimovich.
Go to Profile#11570
Jakob Kunz
1874 - 1938 (64 years)
Jakob Kunz was an American physicist who pioneered the development and application of photoelectric cells. Born in Brittnau, Switzerland, he earned his bachelor's degree in 1897 and his Ph.D in 1902 from the Eidgenossisches Polytechnikum in Zurich, and was active in the Baháʼí Faith from 1921.
Go to Profile#11571
Leon Theremin
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
Lev Sergeyevich Termen , better known as Leon Theremin, was a Russian inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass-produced. He also worked on early television research. His secret listening device, "The Thing", hung for seven years in plain view in the United States ambassador's Moscow office and enabled Soviet agents to eavesdrop on secret conversations.
Go to Profile#11572
Gladys Anslow
1892 - 1969 (77 years)
Gladys Amelia Anslow was an American physicist who spent her career at Smith College. She was the first woman to work with the cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Anslow was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to John Anslow and Ella Iola Leonard. Anslow attended Springfield Central High School and entered Smith College in 1909. While studying at Smith College, Anslow was a member of the Mathematical Society and served as vice president of the Physics Club. In her second year, Anslow elected a focus on physics under Frank Allan Waterman. Following her graduation with an A.B.
Go to Profile#11573
Walter Hoppe
1917 - 1986 (69 years)
Walter Hoppe was a German physicist and electron microscopist. Walter Hoppe was born in Wallsee-Sindelburg and obtained his doctorate in chemistry at the German University in Prague under Professor J. Boehm. Hoppe became professor and departmental head at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany from 1964 until his retirement in 1985.
Go to Profile#11574
Pio Emanuelli
1889 - 1946 (57 years)
Pio Emanuelli was an Italian astronomer, historian and popularizer of astronomy. He worked for many years at the Vatican Observatory and also taught at the University of Rome. Emanuelli was born in Rome, son of a Vatican clerk. He was only ten when his father died and took an interest in astronomy from a very young age, attending lectures by Elia Millosevich, writing articles in magazines and newspapers. Even as young boy he was in correspondence with astronomers like Giovanni Schiaparelli and Camille Flammarion. In 1910 he joined the Vatican Observatory under Father Johann Georg Hagen and wo...
Go to Profile#11575
Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio
1330 - 1388 (58 years)
Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio , also known as Giovanni de' Dondi, was an Italian physician, astronomer and mechanical engineer in Padua, now in Italy. He is remembered today as a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction. The Astrarium, which he designed and built over a period of 16 years, was a highly complex astronomical clock and planetarium, constructed only 60 or so years after the very first all-mechanical clocks had been built in Europe, and demonstrated an ambitious attempt to describe and model the planetary system with mathematical precision and technological sophistication...
Go to Profile#11576
John Charles Duncan
1882 - 1967 (85 years)
John Charles Duncan was an American astronomer. Life John Charles Duncan was the son of Daniel Davidson and Naomi, née Jessup, Duncan. He graduated from Indiana University and received his Bachelor of Arts there in 1905. In 1905/1906, he received the first Lawrence Fellowship donated by Percival Lowell to students of Indiana University at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and participated in the photographic search for Trans-Neptunian planets. In the summer of 1912 he returned to the Lowell Observatory to help with the search. After receiving his Master of Arts in 1906, he began h...
Go to Profile#11577
Herman March
1878 - 1953 (75 years)
Herman William March was a mathematician and physicist. March studied physics and mathematics at the University of Munich under Wilhelm Röntgen and Arnold Sommerfeld. He received his doctorate in 1911. He had a position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison no later than circa 1920. He died in 1953.
Go to Profile#11578
Győző Zemplén
1879 - 1916 (37 years)
Győző Zemplén was a Hungarian physicist who worked in the fields of hydrodynamics and the kinetic theory of gases. Life Győző Zemplén was born in the town of Nagykanizsa, Hungary. He grew up in Fiume. In 1896, he began his studies at the University of Budapest and, at 19 years age, won an award with an essay on the viscosity of gases. After that he began theoretical and experimental studies. In 1900 he published the essay "On the basic assumptions of the kinetic theory of gases" in the Annalen der Physik, but had been previously published mathematical works. In the same year he graduated from the University, but remained as a research assistant.
Go to Profile#11579
Mary Taylor Slow
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Mary Taylor Slow was a British physicist who worked on the theory of radio waves and the application of differential equations to physics. She was the first woman to take up the study of radio as a profession.
Go to Profile#11580
Stepan Malkhasyants
1857 - 1947 (90 years)
Stepanos Sargsi Malkhasiants was an Armenian academician, philologist, linguist, and lexicographer. An expert in classical Armenian literature, Malkhasiants wrote the critical editions and translated the works of many classical Armenian historians into modern Armenian and contributed seventy years of his life to the advancement of the study of the Armenian language.
Go to Profile#11581
Carl Clarence Kiess
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Carl Clarence Kiess was an American astronomer. His main contributions was in the study of solar and stellar spectra. Kiess was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He earned a BA in astronomy from Indiana University in 1910 and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1913. After teaching at the University of Missouri, Pomona College, and the University of Michigan, Kiess took a position at the National Bureau of Standards in 1917. He retired from the bureau in 1957.
Go to Profile#11582
Colin Cherry
1914 - 1979 (65 years)
Edward Colin Cherry was a British cognitive scientist whose main contributions were in focused auditory attention, specifically the cocktail party problem regarding the capacity to follow one conversation while many other conversations are going on in a noisy room. Cherry used shadowing tasks to study this problem, which involve playing two different auditory messages to a participant's left and right ears and instructing them to attend to only one. The participant must then shadow this attended message.
Go to Profile#11583
Pieter Johannes van Rhijn
1886 - 1960 (74 years)
Pieter Johannes van Rhijn was a Dutch astronomer. Born in Gouda, he studied at Groningen. He served as director at the Sterrenkundig Laboratorium in Groningen. He died in Groningen. The crater van Rhijn on the Moon is named after him, as is asteroid 2203 van Rhijn.
Go to Profile#11584
Ioannis Papadakis
1825 - 1876 (51 years)
Ioannis G. Papadakis was an author, mathematician, physicist, astronomer, meteorologist, and professor. He was the second director of the National Observatory of Athens. He temporarily succeeded Georgios Konstantinos Vouris until Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt replaced him as the third director of the observatory. His most notable work was the observation of the Moons of Jupiter and other meteorological observations in the 1850s. He was also a Scottish rite freemason.
Go to Profile#11585
Louis G. Henyey
1910 - 1970 (60 years)
Louis George Henyey was an American astronomer. His parents, Albert and Mary Henyey, were immigrants from Hungary. Louis George Henyey married Elizabeth Rose Belak, born in Budapest, on April 28, 1934; they had three children: Thomas Louis, Francis Stephen, and Elizabeth Maryrose.
Go to Profile#11586
George W. Hough
1836 - 1909 (73 years)
George Washington Hough was an American astronomer. Biography George Washington Hough was born in Tribes Hill, New York on October 24, 1836. He discovered 627 double stars and made systematic studies of the surface of Jupiter. He designed and constructed several instruments used in astronomy, meteorology, and physics. From 1862 to 1874, Hough was director of Dudley Observatory, Albany, New York. In 1879 he was appointed professor of astronomy at the University of Chicago. He became the director of Dearborn Observatory when the observatory was moved to Evanston, Illinois. He introduced original plans for the dome and electric control for the telescope.
Go to Profile#11587
Giovanni Battista Amici
1786 - 1863 (77 years)
Giovanni Battista Amici was an Italian astronomer, microscopist, and botanist. Amici was born in Modena, in present-day Italy. After studying at Bologna, he became professor of mathematics at Modena, and in 1831 was appointed inspector-general of studies in the Duchy of Modena. A few years later he was chosen director of the observatory at Florence, where he also lectured at the museum of natural history. Amici died in Florence in 1863.
Go to Profile#11588
Shohé Tanaka
1862 - 1945 (83 years)
Tanaka Shōhei was a Japanese physicist, music theorist, and inventor. He graduated from Tokyo University in 1882 as a science student. On an imperial scholarship, he was sent to Germany for doctoral studies in 1884, together with Mori Ōgai. His dissertation concerned just intonation and practical means to its implementation.
Go to Profile#11589
Otto August Rosenberger
1800 - 1890 (90 years)
Otto August Rosenberger was a Baltic German astronomer from Tukums in Courland. He was born in Tukkum, Courland, Russia. Rosenberger graduated from the University of Königsberg, and was noted for his study of comets. He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1837. He died in Halle, Prussian Saxony.
Go to Profile#11590
Guidobaldo del Monte
1545 - 1607 (62 years)
Guidobaldo del Monte , Marquis del Monte, was an Italian mathematician, philosopher and astronomer of the 16th century. Biography Del Monte was born in Pesaro. His father, Ranieri, was from a leading wealthy family in Urbino. Ranieri was noted for his role as a soldier and also as the author of two books on military architecture. The Duke of Urbino, Duke Guidobaldo II, honoured him with the title Marchese del Monte so the family had only become a noble one in the generation before Guidobaldo. On the death of his father Guidobaldo inherited the title of Marchese.
Go to Profile#11591
William Perl
1920 - 1970 (50 years)
William Perl , whose original name was William Mutterperl, was an American physicist and Soviet spy. Background While a student at the City College of New York, Perl joined the Steinmetz Club, the campus branch of the Young Communist League, where he met and befriended future Soviet spies Julius Rosenberg, Morton Sobell and Joel Barr. Perl graduated with a degree in engineering in 1939, and in 1940 began working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at their Langley Army Air Base research facility in Hampton, Virginia. In 1944 Perl transferred to the NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio.
Go to Profile#11592
Edward Skinner King
1861 - 1931 (70 years)
Edward Skinner King was an American astronomer. In 1887 he graduated from Hamilton College and joined the staff of the Harvard Observatory, where he supervised the photographic imaging and related work. He became a pioneer and authority on the process of photographic photometry. In 1912 he noticed that some types of films appeared to perform better during the winter months, which led to the use of the so-called "cold camera" where the temperature is lowered to around -40 °C. From 1926 until his death he was the Phillips Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#11593
Pierre-Michel Duffieux
1891 - 1976 (85 years)
Pierre-Michel Duffieux was a French physicist, known as the founder of Fourier optics. Life and career Duffieux became interested in physics by listening to the lectures of Pierre Duhem in high school in Bordeaux. In 1912 he entered the École Normale Supérieure. During the first world war he was involved in military work under the supervision of Henri Bénard, applying Fourier methods to measuring the coefficients of thermal conductivity. This work resulted in his first scientific publication.
Go to Profile#11594
James Curley
1796 - 1889 (93 years)
James Curley was an Irish-American astronomer. He was born at Athleague, County Roscommon, Ireland. His early education was limited, though his talent for mathematics was discovered, and to some extent developed, by a teacher in his native town. He left Ireland in his youth, arriving in Philadelphia on 10 October 1817. Here he worked for two years as a bookkeeper and then taught mathematics at Frederick, Maryland.
Go to Profile#11595
Herbert Alonzo Howe
1858 - 1926 (68 years)
Herbert Alonzo Howe was an American astronomer and educator. Biography Born in Brockport, New York, he was the son of Alonzo J. Howe, a professor at the old University of Chicago, and Julia M. Osgood. During his youth he developed an interest in the stars, witnessing the spectacular Leonid meteor shower of November 1866. He matriculated to the old University of Chicago, where he graduated with an A.B. in 1875 at the age of sixteen. Joining the staff of the Cincinnati Observatory as an assistant, he worked primarily on computing orbital elements and observing double stars. In 1877, he was awarded his A.M.
Go to Profile#11596
Lawrence O. Brockway
1907 - 1979 (72 years)
Lawrence Olin Brockway was a physical chemist who spent most of his career at the University of Michigan, where he developed early methods for electron diffraction. Early life and education Brockway was born on September 23, 1907, in Topeka, Kansas. He attended the University of Nebraska and received his B.S. in 1929 and his M.S. a year later. He then moved to the California Institute of Technology, where he was one of the first graduate students of Linus Pauling. He and Pauling were interested in the physics of interatomic interactions and focused their efforts on the structure of chalcopyri...
Go to Profile#11597
Petrus Astronomus
1450 - Present (576 years)
Petrus Astronomus, O.Ss.S., , a German by birth, was a Bridgettine monk in Vadstena Abbey, Vadstena, Sweden. In 1506, he created an astronomical clock for the Uppsala Cathedral, which, in addition to the hours and minutes of the day, also illustrated the moon phase and the movements of the planets. The clock was repaired by Christopher Polhem in the 17th century but destroyed in a fire in 1702.
Go to Profile#11598
Herbert Jehle
1907 - 1983 (76 years)
Herbert Jehle was a German-American physicist. Jehle graduated in 1930 from the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart with a degree in engineering and in 1933 from the Technische Hochschule Berlin with an engineering doctorate in textile manufacture.He was part of the 'Bonhoeffer circle' of students, talking theology and making hesitant attempts at spiritual exercises, listening to Bonhoeffer's Negro spirituals. For the academic year 1933–1934 he studied theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge. In 1935/36 he worked for the Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik. It was in large part due to Bonhoeffer’s influence that he became a pacifist.
Go to Profile#11599
Jarl Axel Wasastjerna
1896 - 1972 (76 years)
Jarl Axel Wasastjerna was a Finnish physicist. After his academic career, he worked in industry, received an honorary degree in technology in 1949, and the honorary title of Vuorineuvos in 1957. Wasastjerna was Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Helsinki from 1925–1946, where he oversaw the dissertation of Eugenie Lisitzin, the first woman to earn a PhD in Finland in 1938. He later became envoy of Finland in Stockholm from 1940 to 1943, Managing Director of United Wool Company from 1948 to 1954, President of the Nordic Union Bank from 1944 1951, and Chairman of the Tampella Executive Board beginning in 1944.
Go to Profile#11600
Oskar Vierling
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Oskar Walther Vierling was a German physicist, inventor, entrepreneur and professor in high-frequency technology. Vierling was an important inventor and engineer of electronic and electro-acoustic instruments between the 1930s and 1950s.
Go to Profile